10 most disliked MCU villains, ranked

9. Dar-Benn

The Marvel Cinematic Universe admittedly has a lot of problems in its current form. It hasn't exactly managed to capitalize on the story potential of the reset that Avengers: Endgame provided it with and a lot of its more recent titles have been a bit diluted and disappointing. However, one thing that Marvel Studios has tightened up on is each outing's villains, as the old days of lacklustre baddies are mostly in the past. The Marvels, however, was a bit of a step backwards in that department.

Don't get me wrong, the 2022 movie was a lot of fun and its core trinity of superheroes were a delight (seriously, don't let any critics fool you into thinking otherwise), but its biggest struggles stemmed from its rather basic villain. Dar-Benn does have a commanding presence on-screen, thanks in no small part to Zawe Ashton's committed performance, but the character just doesn't thrill audiences in the way that she could have.

She has a solid backstory that involves saving the people of her world, but that's downplayed in favor of that predictable area of one-note villainy that the character spends most of the movie residing in. She's very spooky in presence and scary in speech, but it's all basic surface-level villainy. The movie wants us to fear her instead of understand her and, as she doesn't offer up much beyond what we've seen before, we don't.

Fans struggled with Dar-Benn because she felt more like a villain-of-the-week than the Captain Marvel archenemy the movie wanted us to believe she was. Had it leaned into her backstory more and developed her as a character, we could have had a compelling antagonist torn between her desire for justice and revenge. Instead we got bad guy 101.